by Rajia Hassib
“My grandmother tried to predict my future today,” he said.
“How?”
“Reading coffee grounds.”
“Very appropriate. I should tell Claire about that, maybe she’d like to add a coffee grounds reading service. This would definitely lure people in. Here’s a business idea for you.”
“Would not work with regular coffee, though. She reads Turkish coffee. Thicker grounds. They leave traces on the inside of the cups.”
“So what did she see?”
“Nothing important, I guess.”
She sighed. “I’d like to see my future.” She turned to him. “Has she ever predicted something that came true?”
“Kind of. Once, I guess. I don’t know.” His heart raced as he remembered Hosaam’s broken cup. He stared at his feet but could feel Brittany look at him, waiting. All she needed to do was ask one more question, and he would blurt it all out. She predicted something bad would happen to my brother. He shot himself and his girlfriend. I saw the bloodstained grass.
She waited, and when he said nothing, she looked away. He could see her in his peripheral vision, her head turning from him, respecting his privacy, perhaps, or giving him the same freedom she did when she had not pushed him to reveal what his initials stood for. He wished he could let it all spill. Instead, he said, “It’s all nonsense, anyway.”
She nodded. “I know.”
She folded her arms and slid down in her seat, letting her head rest on the back of the bench. Seeing her stare up at the tree branches above, he knew he had missed his chance. He wanted to reach out and hold her arm, say listen, and then tell her everything about Hosaam and confess that he did, perhaps, believe in Ehsan’s fortune-telling capabilities. Instead, he looked up as well and, watching the birds hop from branch to branch, remembered Ehsan’s stories about how Arabs of old used to watch bird movements for divinations. Beside him, he could feel Brittany fidget. He feared she might be getting ready to get up and go home already.
“So what would you like to see?” he blurted out.
“What?” she asked.
“Your future, I mean. What would you like to see, if you could see your future?”
She sighed, still looking up in the trees, her arms crossed. Then, slowly, she started, “An art gallery. Something small, not garish like those huge empty ones that make you feel like you’re visiting the dentist. I’d like to work with painters no one knows, the people I know spend days locked up in a tiny room drawing. I’d make just enough money to take a whole week off every month. Then I’d go out to the woods, somewhere new every time, camp out somewhere, and paint. In the winter, I’d stay home; I’d have a small loft in the village—that’d be cool; or I’d go down somewhere warm. Georgia, maybe. I’d like to go to Georgia. I saw a picture of a canyon there once,” she said, turning to face him. “Providence Canyon. The picture showed this big cliff with sides that went from snow white to yellow to orange to a dark rusty ocher to Tuscan brown—all in one cliff. And the top of the cliff was covered with trees—not all bare like the Grand Canyon, but green.” She leaned back again. “I’d like to paint that.”
The colors of the monarch, he thought, imagining the cliff like a color chart of the wings of a butterfly. “Sounds beautiful. I’d like to see this painting, one day.”
She laughed. “Sure. I’ll even dedicate it to you. I’ll also give you shares of my nonexisting studio and my never-to-exist loft.”
“You’re not in a very good mood today, are you?” She had never been sarcastic before. Straightforward, yes. But not sarcastic.
She lifted one hand to her face. “No. No, I’m not.”
He waited. Her fingers, nails painted a dark violet, touched her brow so he could not see her eyes. He focused on her eyebrow ring, two bright yellow dots that accented the sharp point of her brow. “Yellow contrasts with purple,” she had once explained to him, showing him a color wheel. “See?” He had thought only of how the piercing must have hurt, which reminded him of Natalie. Now, whenever he looked at the eyebrow ring, he tried not to think of Natalie.
“Sebastian dropped in at work, today,” she went on, slowly. She let her hand fall down to her lap, and he saw she had been crying.
“What did he want?” He spoke softly so she would not hear the quiver in his voice.
“I don’t know,” she groaned, her shoulders drooping. “I really don’t know. He says he wants to get back with me, but I know he doesn’t.”
“Why not?” He could never imagine how Sebastian had let her go, even though he knew she’d dumped him, not vice versa. Still, he had blamed the rich boyfriend for breaking her heart. He should have been able to keep her.
“Because I know it would never work out, and he does, too. His parents would kill him, for one thing. I should show you his apartment, one day. The rent his father pays for that thing is more than what I make in six months at the coffee shop.” She sniffed, snickering. “Maybe that’s where I got the loft wish from. Bad influence, hanging around with him for so long.”
Khaled had seen Sebastian only once, during one of his and Brittany’s on-again periods. He had looked like a Polo ad, complete with side-parted blond hair. Based on race alone, Khaled felt he would have no chance competing with Sebastian; age and wealth drove the point further in. Still, Khaled had seen Sebastian kiss her goodbye. He had seen him grab her hand as he walked away, letting go only when he was too far from her to keep holding on.
“But he does love you, Brit. And if he keeps asking you to come back—”
“He doesn’t love me,” she spat. “He loves the idea of being with me. It makes him feel special, different from his friends. I’m just one more show-and-tell thing.”
She lifted both hands to her face, letting one sob escape before she held herself still, her entire body rigid. Khaled waited. If he had Garrett’s courage, he would have hugged her now.
“Miracles don’t happen, Khaled,” she murmured through her fingers. “Rich boys don’t sweep poor girls off their feet and take them to live happily ever after in their castles.”
Khaled knotted his brows, looking away from her. He could not contest the idea—if miracles did happen, Hosaam and Natalie would have been alive and happy. His family would have been intact. The town would have embraced them, like he had believed they did his whole life, up to last year. If miracles did happen, he would have had a chance with Brittany.
Again Ehsan forced herself into his thoughts. She would disagree, of course. Eldoaa yarodd al-qkadar, she always said. Prayer thwarts fate. He had heard the phrase so often, it had become one of her staples, like her prayers for his safe return whenever he left home, or her mumblings during the day, asking God for forgiveness and blessings. Never before had he truly contemplated what her words meant. Now, looking away from Brittany but still hearing her occasional faint sob, he considered what Ehsan had told him, how her obsession with foretelling the future was a manifestation of her constant search for the right prayer. If she knew what fate had in store, she could pray for a reversal of misfortunes, and if she prayed long enough and sincerely enough, God would intervene. Perhaps she saw Hosaam’s end as a failure of prayer on her part.
He wished he could truly believe in that, as well. He felt he once did, but could not recall when. At some point, he remembered prostrating himself and praying fervently for something—what? A good grade on a test he had not prepared for? A new butterfly habitat that his father would not buy him? A day without being bullied at school? The prayer escaped him, but the sensation did not—he could feel it now, overcoming him like it must have years ago, the desperation gingerly kept from crushing him by a hope of being heard, of being noticed, of being deemed good enough to deserve divine intervention. He almost groaned. Not once this past year had he asked God for anything, even though he had dutifully performed his five prayers every day. Almost every day. Now he wished he could still pray with the belief of a ten-year-old or that of his aging grandmother. If he could, he would ask
God for happiness for Brittany, for peace of mind for him, for a coming weekend devoid of humiliation for his family. He would ask God to intervene and thwart whatever other misfortunes fate had in store for him. He would, at the very least, ask God to let him stay seated here, next to Brittany, for the rest of the day.
“I’m sorry, Khaled. I didn’t mean to be such a bore,” Brittany said.
“You’re not. You never are.” He looked at her and saw her smile at him. Her eyes, though still red, were dry.
“You’re so sweet, you know that?” she asked. He blushed, tried to mumble something, and she laughed. Pulling closer to him, she put one arm around him and placed her head on his shoulder. He stayed perfectly still. Then, slowly, he wrapped his arm around her waist. She was looking up, away from the crowds of runners and stroller-pushing mothers that passed them, and he lifted his head up, too, toward the trees, and, closing his eyes, prayed that she would remain like this for as long as possible.
11
ENGLISH: Like father, like son / Like mother, like daughter.
ARABIC: This cub is that lion’s offspring / Turn the carafe upside down, and the daughter will resemble her mother.
So you’d rather hide?”
Samir’s voice, calm as it was, had an edge that Nagla recognized. She paced her bedroom as she spoke to him on the phone, trying to keep her voice low so her mother would not hear. As a precaution, she closed her bedroom door.
“I’m not saying that. I just don’t think going there would work out well.”
Samir sighed. “Of course it would. We can show them we’re a family, still together despite what happened. We can show them we care enough to offer our condolences and are brave enough to do it despite their resistance. We’ll look courageous. Americans like this kind of stuff. Trust me. I know them better than you do.”
“I’ve been living with them for as long as you have, remember?”
“Yes. But you’re home alone all the time. I’m interacting with them every day. I know what I’m talking about. We need a public act of solidarity. It’s the only way we can get them to forget what happened.”
“Can’t we offer this public act of solidarity some other time?”
“Like when? Do you want me to call a town hall meeting just for our sake? When on earth will we have all those people gathered in the same place again?”
“There has to be another way to do this.”
“There is no other way.” He paused. “Why are you so bent against this? You’re the only one who thinks it’s a bad idea.”
“I’m not. The kids don’t like it, either.”
“Since when do we listen to advice from children? They’re just too self-conscious. They don’t want that many eyes on them.”
“They’re not children anymore.”
He sighed again. “Okay, so Khaled’s seventeen years of existence make him see things clearer than I do.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I’m telling you, it’s all in your head. Even your mom agrees with me.”
Nagla paused. “You spoke to my mom about this?”
“She’s living with us, isn’t she? She was here when Cynthia came visiting. What’s wrong with discussing things with her?”
“And she agreed with you?”
“Yes.”
Of course. Why was she even surprised?
“You’re making too big a deal out of this, Nagla. Trust me—it will work out.”
He waited. She paced the room and said nothing. She should tell him that Ameena thought it was a horrible idea, but he would only belittle her opinion, then be angry with Nagla for discussing family affairs with strangers. She would respond that he had discussed it with her mother, but he would argue that her mother was not a stranger and defy her to contradict that. The entire conversation was heading toward a dead end.
“I have patients waiting.” He hung up before she could protest. She stared at the phone in her hand and then flung it onto her bed.
• • •
Not until she was on her second cigarette did she realize she had forgotten to open the windows. She cranked them both then opened the door as well, hoping the draft would help disperse the smoke before it clung to her bed linens.
The rain had stopped and the day turned calm, with only a gentle breeze, not even enough to make the trees sway, a change in weather that contradicted earlier forecasts and seemed to banish—or, at least, postpone—the expected storm. She rested one arm on the side of the window, looking out, and inhaled the warm, moist air, surprisingly soothing, a reminder of spring days in Egypt when the air would blow from the sea, filling her lungs with the smell of salty iodine, so fresh and clean. Pulling the screen off and placing it on the floor, she wiped the windowsill dry and then leaned out, flicking cigarette ash on her deck below. In the distance, she traced the tops of the trees, a wavy line bordered by the sky. To her right, a cluster of trees formed a large hump that protruded from the mass forming Summerset Park—how had she never noticed that before? How could she have lived in this house for close to twenty years and yet never noticed the shape of the trees that greeted her every morning?
She cranked the casement window fully open. Holding on to the edge and biting on the cigarette to keep it in place, she carefully lifted one leg out the window and slowly raised herself until she sat straddling the windowsill, her back pushed against the frame, one foot in her room and the other dangling out of it. She held on to the frame with both hands before she looked down to see what her foot was hitting and realized that she could reach the roof of the living room’s bay window. She let her foot rest on it and settled in place.
The windowsill did not make for comfortable seating. A small pillow would have probably spared her tailbone the nudging pain, and the moisture that she had apparently not fully wiped away was already seeping through her pant leg, but she was reluctant to move after she had found her balance. She grabbed the cigarette, brushing off the ash that had fallen on her jeans. From where she was seated, she could see the trees clear ahead, and she examined them, feeling a strange satisfaction in knowing that she, in her late forties, could still wear skinny jeans and maneuver her way out a window—or, at least, halfway out. The breeze tickled her ankle, whisking her back to when she was nine, riding her bike along the Alexandria shore. She had to take a deep breath to steady herself again and to control the shiver that went through her.
She regretted having called Samir. Waiting until he came home would have been better, but, then again, she didn’t want to risk having the kids overhear their conversation, which, considering Samir’s tendency to yell, would have been inevitable. She wondered whether he had always been so loud; when they first got married, she used to like listening to his voice, especially with her eyes closed. He would be talking and she would simply close her eyes—that much she remembered. His voice, so deep it seemed suited to a man twice his breadth and a foot taller, had soothed her, and keeping her eyes closed allowed her to dissect its tone until she found the one layer that she knew affected her so, giving her a feeling of home that even the snow outside—so foreign, at first—could not disprove. When he asked why she did it and heard her explanation, he laughed, teasing her about her sharp hearing—an inside joke threading its way throughout their marriage. At least once, she was certain, he had stopped talking as her eyes were closed and tiptoed around her, then, coming up from behind, he had yelled in her ear, causing her to jump. He had doubled over in laughter in response. But that had been long ago. If she were to close her eyes while he talked now, he would probably ask whether he was boring her to sleep.
It hit her, now, that his voice had changed. She took another puff of her cigarette, blew the smoke into the air, and watched it dissipate. She could not be certain, of course, but it seemed that his voice had gained another layer of impatient, dissatisfied edginess that she had not sensed before. Or perhaps it had always been there and she had failed to hear it. Whatever the reason, she could not remember
the last time his voice had soothed her.
She heard a branch crack in the distance, and, behind her, her mother’s slow step climbing the stairs. Her senses had become increasingly sharp—perhaps Samir was right and she was cursed with the hearing of a cat. But she was noticing things that she had never noticed before, like that hump of trees far ahead, or the words on Ameena’s walls and the prayers that sprinkled her own talk as well as her friends’. She remembered her encounter with Ameena and winced. Why was she dissecting everything today? A few months ago, Khaled had tried to explain to her how evolution happened when animals were subjected to external stress: a new predator, perhaps, or an environmental threat to their existence. She had listened and nodded, grateful for what she had seen as an uncharacteristic attempt at intimacy on Khaled’s part, but she had not really paid attention to what he was saying. She wondered whether her newfound perception was a sort of evolutionary leap, too; whether the stress of this past year, and now this past week, had made her see things she never recognized before.
“What are you doing?” Ehsan stood in the doorway, as she always did. Why did she have to pause at the door before she walked into any room? Was this, too, something Nagla should add to her list of new observations? She watched her mother, pondering when Samir had had time to talk to her in private. Nagla drew on the last puff of her cigarette and then flicked it away.
“I was smoking.”
“Like this?” Ehsan raised an arm as she walked toward her. “Are you out of your mind?”
“I needed the fresh air.”
“You’re half naked!”